clickbait

• click-bait, click bait

From click +‎ bait.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈklɪkbeɪt/

clickbait (countable and uncountable, plural clickbaits)

1. (Internet marketing, derogatory) Website content that is aimed at generating advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs; such headlines.

   Synonym: link bait

   • 2012, Gideon Haigh, The Deserted Newsroom:

     Fairfax's sites are renowned for what is sometimes called ‘clickbait’: headlines written to beguile passing eyeballs but which obscure nondescript or irrelevant stories.

   • 2013, Peter Preston, The Observer, 29 Sep 2013:

     "His careful lawyerly writing would be out of fashion now", wrote one commenter after Kettle's piece. "It wasn't clickbait".

   • 2017, Ted Kwartler, Text Mining in Practice with R, John Wiley & Sons (→ISBN)

     In August 2016, leaders at Facebook announced a plan to identify and limit clickbait, because the Facebook newsfeed goal is to “show people the stories most relevant to them.”

   • 2019, Deepanshu Pandey, Garimendra Verma, & Sushama Nagpal, “Clickbait Detection Using Swarm Intelligence”, in Advances in Signal Processing and Intelligent Recognition Systems:

     In comparison with algorithms used in the past, this SI based technique provided a better accuracy and a human interpretable set of rules to classify clickbaits

• clickbaity
• clickbaiter

clickbait (third-person singular simple present clickbaits, present participle clickbaiting, simple past and past participle clickbaited)

1. To add clickbait to a web page; to direct clickbait at someone.
   • 2015, How to Write About Music, →ISBN, page 60:

     Whether they're acts of clickbaiting or dumbness, internet headlines routinely mischaracterize quotes, inaccurately paraphrase statements, and misuse specific terms, all to make readers click.

   • 2017, Ainslie Paton, The Love Experiment, →ISBN:

     But he'd clickbaited her.

   • 2017, Brian Whitney, Subversive: Interviews with Radicals, →ISBN:

     I have never clickbaited anyone with overexaggerated titles, but also never downplayed the severity of the content within.

• chumbox

Borrowed from English clickbait.

clickbait ? (uncountable)

1. clickbait
   • 2017, John Verhoeven, Het wat en hoe van contentstrategie, Atlas Contact, →ISBN, page 307:

     ..prikkelende koppen en mooi beeld te gebruiken om maar zo veel mogelijk mensen te lokken. Het gevolg van deze clickbait kan dan zijn dat mensen zich bekocht voelen.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

   • 2017, Linda Duits, Dolle mythes: een frisse factcheck van feminisme toen en nu, Amsterdam University Press, →ISBN, page 64:

     Het gaat hier om clickbait: het is de bedoeling dat je klikt zodat de site advertentie-inkomsten aan je kan verdienen. Het is goedkope content die gretig gedeeld wordt, zodat er nog meer geld aan de clicks verdiend kan worden.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

   • 2018, Jan Postma, De Trump-fluisteraars: Invloed in de schaduw van de macht, Karakter, →ISBN, page 42:

     Breitbart.com maakt naam door confrontaties en controverse op te zoeken. Lezers worden binnengehaald met boosmakertjes, clickbait, relletjes, en een flinke lading fake news en complottheorieën.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

   • 2018, Rudi Vranckx, Mijn kleine oorlog: Dertig jaar aan het front, Overamstel Uitgevers, →ISBN, page 438:

     Tweets en clickbait: het zijn de nieuwe kleren van de keizer van medialand.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

• clickbait on Wikipedia.Wikipedia